Competition for the New York Municipal Building, 1888-1907

In the 1880s, running out of space for its growing bureaucracy, New York solicited designs from architects for a new municipal office building. Actually they held four separate contests between 1888 and 1907, so I suppose they were having budgetary issues. Or maybe they just couldn't make up their minds.

I found these drawings on Archimaps, and I haven't been able to find out anything more about them, so I don't know which competition they were part of. But I love the alternative universes they conjure up. Below is the eventual winner, by William M. Kendall of McKim, Mead and White; construction of this started in 1907 and was completed in 1914.